---
title: No one but the watch-dog and the swallows knew her; and they were on… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: No one but the watch-dog and the swallows knew her; and they were only poor animals, and could say nothing. Who acts: one, swallows, poor animals. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every cl
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/208/35/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 1, sentence 35

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No one but the watch-dog and the swallows knew her; and they were only poor animals, and could say nothing.

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**Who acts:** one, swallows, poor animals · **What happens:** know, be, say · **To what, where:** queen, poor animals, nothing · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (one, swallows, poor animals), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:208:35
# text = No one but the watch-dog and the swallows knew her; and they were only poor animals, and could say nothing.
1	No	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	2	det	_	_
2	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
3	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	watch	watch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	swallows	swallow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	conj	_	_
11	knew	know	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	19	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
15	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
16	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
17	only	only	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
18	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	animals	animal	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
21	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	23	cc	_	_
22	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	23	aux	_	_
23	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	acl:relcl	_	_
24	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	23	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **know** | past | no one but the watch dog and the swallows | queen |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer she=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is a** | past | swallows *= swallow* | poor animals |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | could | poor animals *not said here* | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent nothing=Topic |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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- ← previous: [sentence 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/208/34/)
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- ↑ back to [The Wild Swans, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/208/)